Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to take steps to improve the (a) recruitment and (b) retention of STEM teachers; and whether she has made an assessment of the adequacy of existing schemes at attracting and retaining staff.

The Department’s recruitment and retention reforms aim to ensure effective teacher supply across all subjects. The Department recognises that recruitment and retention in some subjects, including STEM subjects, remains more challenging and the Department has put in place additional targeted initiatives.

In October 2022, the Department announced an Initial Teacher Training (ITT) financial incentives package worth up to £181 million for those starting ITT in 2023/24, which is a £52 million increase on 2022/23. The package includes bursaries worth £27,000 tax free and scholarships worth £29,000 tax free to encourage talented trainees to teach in key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing. More information on the financial incentives package can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/funding-initial-teacher-training-itt/funding-initial-teacher-training-itt-academic-year-2023-to-2024. For the 2023/24 academic year, the Department has also extended bursary and scholarship eligibility to all non-UK national trainees in physics.

There is strong evidence that increasing bursaries increases ITT recruitment. The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) have recently published independent research which corroborates the Department’s analysis which finds that a £1,000 increase in bursary value results in approximately a 3% increase in applicants on average, all other things being equal. The NFER research can be found here: https://www.nfer.ac.uk/media/4957/assessing_the_impact_of_pay_and_financial_incentives_in_improving_shortage_of_subject_teacher_supply.pdf.

The Department also pays a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 tax-free for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers, who choose to work in disadvantaged schools, including in Education Investment Areas. More information is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/levelling-up-premium-payments-for-teachers.

In spring 2022, the Department launched ‘Engineers teach physics’ (ETP), an ITT course which was piloted as a step to encourage engineering graduates and career changers with an engineering background to consider a career as a physics teacher. Following the pilot year, the Department has now rolled ETP out nationally, with 18 providers currently offering this course.

The Department reviews the existing schemes on offer each year and considers the introduction of specific targeted initiatives where there is evidence that they could contribute to the recruitment and retention of excellent teachers.

To support retention across all subjects, the Department has published a range of resources to help address staff workload and wellbeing. This includes the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter, which the Department is encouraging schools to sign up to as a shared commitment to promote staff wellbeing. The Charter can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter. The Department will be reviewing progress made against the Charter later this year.